"I can't believe you!"
Despite the obvious animosity that still lay between them Roger had only ever punched Richard once, when they were young and after Richard had reported him for cheating. Rog had walked up to him in the corridor, socked him in the jaw, and simply walked away. Thinking about it, that was probably the last time Richard had seen him in person until Roger had appeared on Saint Marie twenty years later.
But right now the man looked like he was one asinine comment away from gladly doing it again.
Roger brandished a finger under Richard's nose. "You know the reason why I authorised you to make contact? Because established priors said that they, especially Bordey, would investigate on their own and you assured me that you could stop them from poking around. And here you are, not only actively encouraging them to poke around, but dragging them to my door!"
"Now you're being unreasonable."
Roger's face was dangerously red. Richard briefly wondered whether he was having problems with high blood pressure again. He really needed to start taking better care of himself. "You know the best thing about you as an investigator, Poole? You weren't a loose cannon. You went by the book, knew the procedures in and out, and could be relied on for that. You were predictable." Roger threw his hands up in the air. "But as soon as we set foot on this bloody island it's like your brain has fallen out!"
Or, it was more like the invisible barrier that separated Richard from the rest of the world had been lifted. He'd found he could breathe again.
"I ought to send you home."
"You won't do that." Richard said steadily, knowing Roger's bluff. "You know you won't do that."
Roger swore before spinning around and hitting the wall. Richard supposed he was lucky it wasn't his face. Still cursing a blue streak Roger shook out his smarting hand before slowly leaning against the wall, body drooping in exhaustion.
"Well, that was smart." Richard said sarcastically, and despite himself Roger laughed. And in that microsecond the two of them were eighteen-year-old boys again.
"Listen." It was sodding hard when one of your technically direct superiors was someone you could remember being so drunk once that you had to pull their head out of the toilet so they didn't drown themselves. "We can't underestimate the value of local intelligence."
"Local intelligence." Roger snorted. Richard ignored him.
"DS Best worked under Superintendent Dooley. He's aware of Dooley's quirks and foibles."
Roger ran a hand wearily down his face.
"You, Rich, have been the biggest pain in my arse since we were kids."
"The feeling is entirely mutual, I assure you."
Camille at once wondered why it hadn't been cancelled yet in the face of everything, and yet understood at the same time why the Governor was doggedly continuing on with the annual ball. Saint Marie had never cancelled a party, and the island would not be cowed.
She entered the Governor's Residence with her mother, towed along in Catherine's wake as her maman strode up the stairs, skirts and shawls flaring dramatically and giving Catherine a fantastical appearance that Camille had never quite been able to emulate. At the top of the stairs her maman paused dramatically, surveying everything around herself proudly and allowing everyone an awestruck look at her before gliding into the atrium.
The small part of Camille that was still a teenager cringed.
"Maman, do you have to do this every time?"
"I have absolutely no idea what you are talking about." Her mother barely spared her a glance. "Perhaps you should take more pride in your presentation."
"Of course." Camille spotted Neville Parker and his DS not far from them, both of them in plain clothes that instantly marked them out as different from the other peacocks in the room. "And I suppose that your presentation would definitely not have anything to do with Dorian St Clair."
Dorian St Clair was the mayor of the neighbouring Port Royal, and the two of them had been at loggerheads since Port Royal had taken the Island Cricket League away from Honoré.
"Don't be foolish, Camille, Dorian has absolutely nothing to do with this."
"Mmhm." St Clair wouldn't exactly be the first man her mother had gone out of her way to destroy. "Whatever you say."
Catherine swept off to socialise and terrorise and Camille drifted off to the peripherals so she could study the guests relatively unobserved, snagging a glass of punch she used mainly for a prop.
The governor was there holding court surrounded by adoring sycophants. Also there doing their best to be seen were the rich of Saint Marie and surrounding islands, some new money in tech and shipping, and some old money that dated back to the slave trade and the Barcelona Trading Company. There were a handful of smartly but casually-dressed people with sharp eyes and press badges, uniformed officers on the doors and undercovers drifting around the room dressed as waiters and ushers. She had worked undercover long enough to be able to recognise other undercover officers, and that told her that this was most likely not just another Governor's Ball.
The side door opened again and Camille almost choked on a strawberry as Richard Poole casually strode into the room, coolly buttoning up his jacket, shadowed by the lanky Clarence Bell.
He looked up.
Camille had very few actual movie moments happen in her life but as their eyes connected across the crowded room in that microsecond everything was weirdly right with the world.
And then of course the spell was broken when he raised an eyebrow at her staring, before rolling his eyes.
Immediately she plunged back down to earth. Her nose wrinkled and Camille stuck out her tongue at him. A lightning-fast smile crossed Richard's face before it was gone like it had never been there in the first place.
And so the night continued. If the party hadn't been referenced in the strange invitation, Camille would have blown off her mother's insistence that she come. She spoke to teachers she hadn't seen in years, the ex-pastor that told her when she was 14 that she was too wild and wilful for any man to want her, the headmaster that had told her that undoubtedly she was going to end up behind bars one day. Which he was technically right about, but she wasn't exactly going to tell him that.
Camille was genuinely considering hightailing it the hell out of there before the bell was rung for dinner. They were escorted off to a ballroom where massive tables were laid out with the finest linen and silverware, their places marked with placards with gold calligraphy. Camille tried to dampen down the sudden wave of anger the display of opulence caused, all this money just carelessly splashed around when the police force had operated on a shoestring budget for decades and there were still people living in tin lean-to's on the beach.
She looked down at her name in gold inlay, sitting beside her mother. After a moment the chair on her other side was pulled out and she glanced up.
Of course.
"Monsieur Palou."
He smiled smoothly at her, back in his persona of hotshot Parisian lawyer.
"Don't you have your offsider?" Camille picked at her appetiser as her maman glared at Richard.
"He's keeping himself occupied." The French accent seemed to cause a disconnect in her brain. He wasn't meant to sound like someone she may have grown up alongside, he was meant to sound English and uptight and easily-flustered and like Richard. "Yours?"
"They're keeping themselves occupied." She echoed coolly.
Dinner was as tedious as expected. Camille and Catherine were seated at the Governor's table with a handful of mayors from other Saint Marie towns and some of the more influential guests. A shipping CEO, the millionaires that were almost definitely using the Caribbean as a tax haven, a rumoured rum runner and his mob wife, a construction magnate, his date, and lawyer Ricard Palou.
Faceless waiters in white and black swept in wordlessly with plates of food and Camille had to swallow down the rage. This was not the Saint Marie she knew. Not at all.
The man sitting opposite her caught her eye and boldly stuck out his hand with all the self-assuredness of an American abroad. "Cameron Bennington."
Camille appraised him coolly as he watched her with pale blue eyes. He sat there like he wasn't quite sure how to wear his fancy suit, his hair artfully styled in a carefully carefree way that took hours to perfect.
"Camille Bordey." She considered introducing herself with her rank, but decided that right now discretion was the better part of valour. "My mother is the mayor of Honoré."
"Ah, you're one of our glorious hosts!" Dear God, the amount of men who immediately switched into shmoozing mode on meeting her was exasperating. Camille reached for her water and contemplated throwing it over him.
"I am glad you are enjoying yourself on our island." She said neutrally.
There was a snort from the other end of the table from the construction magnate. Camille didn't like instantly profiling someone, but the man looked like a builder, like he'd much rather be dressed in high-vis and wolf-whistling at women down the street. "I would have thought you'd be ready to get back to the States, Bennington, what with everything found on your ship."
Her gaze immediately sharpened. Ah. This man was the CEO of Sunshine Shipping, the company that owned the cargo ship that was still currently stalled in the bay.
Cameron Bennington's shoulders hunched defensively. "I have nothing to do with that. My staff have nothing to do with that."
The man snorted. "Someone had something to do with it. That dead body didn't just appear on deck."
"Stop it, Cooper." The woman sitting beside him smacked his arm. "Nothing's been proven."
"Yet." Cooper said ominously.
His date rolled her eyes, before deciding to ignore the men. Somehow her action derailed the potential argument. "Liz Preston." She said. "That's Cooper Morris. Ignore the meathead, he likes to pretend he's tough." The last words were fond, and Cooper pulled a face at her.
"Camille."
"Your island is so pretty." Liz said, feeling the very British need to fill the silence. "I only wish I could get Coop to come out and see the 'real' Saint Marie, not just the tourist traps."
Camille smiled. As innocent as the idea was, she was extremely sure that this sweet sixtyish woman dripping in jewellery wouldn't approve of the real Saint Marie. Even Richard had been surprised. And probably a little disgusted. "I can list you some places to see." She offered.
"Oh, would you? That would be lovely."
The whole time Richard barely looked at her, to the point where Camille was tempted to kick him in the ankle or spill a drink on him to get some sort of reaction if it was even just a foul glare. He had become such an adept chameleon that it shook Camille down to her core.
She wanted to go home. She wanted to go home and crawl into bed with her baby and watch mindless children's programming until her brain stopped whirring.
And so it proceeded thusly.
Having worked in her mother's bar until she joined the police force, Camille knew how to small talk. She could bullshit with the best of them and had been acting for the majority of her life. She was smart, she was charming, she was beautiful, and she knew how to dazzle.
At first Camille didn't notice when Cameron Bennington started to get louder and more aggressive. After all, they were at a party with the richest and most entitled people in this part of the Caribbean, so she didn't look up until Richard nudged her wrist, the first initiated contact between them. She glanced at him in surprise and he jerked his chin at Bennington.
The man was starting to twitch in his chair and as she watched he occasionally slapped at invisible bugs. Camille frowned and glanced at Richard; his own brow furrowed.
The two of them had seen the same thing in many other people on their respective beats.
"Mr Bennington?" Camille asked cautiously. "Are you all right?"
The man jerked violently at being addressed directly, one arm jerking up and unconsciously smacking Liz Preston in the back of the head.
Liz yelped, jerking around. "What the hell-?"
Cooper Morris immediately squared up. "The hell was that, Bennington? You like hitting women too?"
Cameron just stared with blown pupils as the builder jerked him out of his seat. Camille shot Richard an oh shit look as both of them rose cautiously to their feet.
"Mon Dieu, don't be dramatic, Cooper!" Catherine snapped. "It was an accident!"
"Mr Morris, put him down." Richard said steadily, and Cooper sneered.
"What are you going to do, froggy?" He snarled, and both Catherine and Dorian snapped to their feet, united for perhaps the only moment in their lives.
"What?" Catherine demanded.
"Say that again." Dorian said, voice deadly.
"Put him down." Camille repeated in a steely tone.
"Sit down!" The governor shrieked. "Are you all insane? You're making us look bad!"
Cooper dropped Bennington to the floor. "I'm making us look bad? You're the one that invited a smuggler-"
"Entrepreneur!" The aforementioned rum-runner-gone-legit-businessman yelped.
"And his moll-!"
At that both the rum runner and his girlfriend leapt to their feet.
"How dare you-"
"Entrepreneur-"
And all hell broke loose. Camille was aware of Parker and Thomas fighting to break it up as she sank down on the floor opposite Richard, Bennington between them. Cameron's eyes were spinning, like he was watching faces on the ceiling, drooling. Richard's face screwed up in concern as he timed the man's pulse.
"We need an ambulance." He said urgently.
Camille indicated her dress. "Where do you suggest I keep my phone?" She hissed. He rolled his eyes and the two of them swapped, Camille timing the alarmingly-fast pulse as Richard hunted for his mobile. As he finally got it out of his pocket and dialled, Bennington started to cough up phlegm and vomit.
"Richard!"
The two of them rolled him to his side. Camille tipped his head back, clearing his airway as best as she could.
"-yes, hello. I need an ambulance. There's a man having a drug overdose." He reeled off the address as Camille called out Bennington's name as his eyelids fluttered, only showing the whites. She leapt to her feet as two men crashed into a nearby table, women screaming, the Governor cursing up a mean streak. She stared around at the chaos, at the people who were so normally so buttoned-up and usually a shining example of the human species almost immediately reduced to animals at the promise of inflicting violence.
Camille raised her fingers to her lips and whistled, as long and loud and piercing as she could as a shocked silence fell.
"Saint Marie Police!" She bellowed. "Return to your seats. Now!"
She looked down at Richard, who silently shook his head as the sirens increased in volume. After a beat Camille strode back to the table, looking over Cameron Bennington's place settings. Cameron had been eating a massive chunk of cake with ice cream, the desert liberally dusted with icing sugar. She frowned, zeroing in on a detail that others would have glossed over.
No one else had extra sugar.
Some of the icing sugar had been spilled across the table and she lightly pressed her finger to it before sniffing cautiously. Camille raised her hand to her mouth and cautiously touched the tip of her finger to her tongue.
Richard looked up, alarmed. "Camille, stop-"
The zip that went through her was immediate, fizzing on her tongue and chasing away any exhaustion. She pulled a face before turning back to Richard who was glaring at her disapprovingly.
"Powdered cocaine." She said. "We've found your drugs."
"You are bloody insane!" He exploded.
Parker was extremely efficient in using the moment of pure shock in between Camille's whistle and the paramedics carting the CEO away to completely regain control of the room, securing the building and immediately organising his people to start preliminary interviews.
Richard stood in the driveway, staring after the retreating ambulance. His mind was both going a mile a minute and yet curiously blank at the same time. There were footsteps crunching in the gravel behind him and he didn't have to look to know it was Camille. The two of them were silent for a moment.
"I have sent Maman home." She said. "You know, this is why I don't go to her parties anymore."
Richard hummed a little. "Maybe we should be talking to your mother about making appropriate friends."
Camille smiled a little to herself. "I would very much like to see you try."
Richard snorted, feeling entirely exhausted. His phone trilled in his pocket and he sighed to see Roger's name on the screen. Bloody son of a - "Poole."
"The tech elves have cracked the USB."
He immediately perked up. "Ledgers?"
"Yeah. Along with personnel files and hundreds of photos. We have them, Richie." There was excitement in Roger's voice. "Teams will be moving in over the next 48-72 hours. It's over."
"But-" Richard blinked. "Cameron Bennington-"
"Our people have just swept his hotel room. We have a suicide note admitting to the murder, moving the drugs, everything."
Camille crept closer so she could hear better and Richard surprised himself by letting her.
He frowned. "Bennington did all of it." That made no sense. Everyone else that had been involved in this case was or had been a career policeman, but Cameron Bennington was just some businessman that no one had known about since relatively recently. The sudden 180 just seemed… off. "Before he died, Max Dooley set out to frame someone-"
"And we have Bennington." Roger snapped. "Don't make this your hill to die on. Sometimes a gut feeling is just a gut feeling."
"But just say-"
"RP, we have means, motive and opportunity. Don't read too much into it."
Richard and Camille looked at each other. It wasn't exactly surprising or out of the ordinary for someone to decide to commit suicide by ingesting a massive amount of drugs. But the arrogant CEO they had both spoken to didn't exactly seem like the sort of chap that would have become so remorseful of his past actions that he would kill himself.
"Understood." Richard said.
Walking down the beach, illuminated by the moon and the lights dancing off the water, sent the both of them spiralling back years to Richard, ever the gentleman, walking Camille safely home after a night out at the bar or an all-nighter at the station during a difficult case. Never mind that Camille would have been more than a match for whatever was waiting out in the dark, Richard's rusty sense of valour would have never allowed him to just let her walk off into the night.
Camille's shoes were dangling from her fingertips, skirts trailing in the sand, and even Richard had divested himself of his jacket and had popped the top buttons of his shirt.
"You can go home now."
A pause. "I suppose."
"Hole up in your cold and rainy England with a book and some fish and chips." She teased gently.
"I suppose." Richard said again. "I'm finished."
Camille frowned. "What?"
"I've been on so many teams, investigating so many cases. But this, this has been the overarching objective of everything." He said. "But it's over. There's nothing left now. It took me away from here, it took me away from you, it took me away from my life. And now it's over. Like that. I don't know what to do next."
She didn't like those words, and she reached out a hand to stop him. She had heard those words, or variations, come from colleagues' mouths before when the reason they were police was severed, and it never ended well, whether it was a rambling voicemail about how they didn't want to be a burden anymore or a sombre email going around the station confirming funeral details. "I don't know what you mean by that, but there are people here that love you, I want you to remember that, Richard Poole."
He blinked at her curiously for a moment before it seemed to register what Camille was inferring, and his eyes widened.
"No, that's not-! That's not what I mean. I would never-" Richard shook his head. "What I mean is that I'm going to have to… redefine myself." He frowned over her shoulder before looking back to her. "I've been a police officer since I was 25. I don't think I can just walk away from all that."
"Why don't you go back to the Met?"
"Yes." He scoffed. "I'll just go back to Croydon and be that sad old copper in the corner going on about the good old days as I slowly decline into gambling and alcoholism. On paper, I was dead for years. I can't just pick up my life like nothing ever happened. I'm too old anyway."
"You're not too old."
"I was too old as a teenager." Richard said, and it made sense. He was one of those people that she just couldn't imagine as a child.
"Oui, I'm perfectly sure you were jaded and middle-aged at 8."
"You're not far off."
Camille nodded. "Well then, that settles it."
"Settles what?" Richard asked dryly.
"That me and Aimèe have no choice but to keep you." She said boldly. He frowned, a little furrow appearing between his eyebrows. Playfully she reached out to smooth his brow like she was wiping away a speck of dust. "That's better."
He squinted at her for a moment before Richard broke into a wry smile. "You are perfectly absurd."
"I will take that over 'bloody insane'."
"You rather caught me by surprise." Richard said. "But then, that in itself is not all that surprising."
"I have to keep you spry somehow." Camille said. "I believe I owe you ten years' worth of surprises."
"Dear God."
"You should be scared."
The wind picked up her hair and he raised a hand, hesitating for a moment before studiously catching a strand and carefully tucking it behind her ear with a serious expression. Camille reached for his hand before he could withdraw it, withdraw into himself and pretend that the moment had never happened. Because that's what Richard did. That's what they always did. Had a moment and then never spoke about it ever again.
"Richard?"
"Camille."
"Why didn't you come back?"
He was silent for a long moment to the point where she thought he wouldn't answer.
"I was... concerned." Richard said finally.
"Of what?"
He frowned down at the sand, the furrow appearing between his eyes once more.
"I was concerned my presence was not as... valued to you as yours was to me."
"That's not true. That was never true." Her heart was threatening to break again. Even after all this time he couldn't bring himself to believe that he had true value, that people meant it when he was told that he was important. Richard was still scarred by his sad and lonely life, certainly not helped that two of his closest friends had attempted to kill him and a third was openly hostile. "Yes, we had beers and played cricket on the beach, but we also mourned you. You were one of us. You were always going to be one of us."
He scoffed a little at that.
Camille said. "You are the voice in my head, you know."
He raised a sceptical brow and she nodded.
"I have a hard case, and you are there prodding me to look closer. I get angry and you tell me that getting hysterical doesn't help anyone. I have a hard day, and you are there to tell me that it could always be worse."
He snorted at that. "Well, that certainly sounds like me. I congratulate you for your characterisation."
Camille rolled her eyes. "I cried for you, you great idiot."
Richard blinked. "You did?"
She put her hand on his chest over Richard's heart, feeling a hard ridge of scar tissue under the cotton shirt. His heart was beating so fast.
"You were not the only one that thought their presence wasn't as valued." She said softly. Camille could have kissed him. All she had to do was take a step to cover the last little distance and-
-the back lights snapped on, illuminating the stretch of beach. Whatever moment there might have been immediately cracked as Richard and Camille's heads immediately snapped around to stare at Catherine who had stepped out onto the sand, her arms folded and her face stony and every inch the imposing family matriarch. Suddenly Camille was seventeen again and had been caught with a boy her mother disapproved of. Catherine's eyes narrowed at Camille's hand on Richard's chest and she awkwardly dropped her hand back to the side.
"Everything has been taken care of, oui?" Her maman asked steadily, cheerily, like nothing out of the usual had happened.
"Ah, yes." Richard swallowed hard. "Everything's been taken care of."
"Tres bien." Catherine said. "Then you can go again, s'il vous plait."
A flash of hurt crossed Richard's face before he smoothed it away.
"Maman." Camille said warningly.
"It's all right." Richard said softly. "I should let you go. Give my love to Aimèe."
"Of course." Camille said, his words rolling through her mind like the ebbing of the ocean. I should let you go. "Goodnight."
"Goodnight."
She watched his dark figure disappear down the beach before she hoisted up her skirts and marched up the sand to her mother. "That was uncalled for." She said. "What do you think you are doing?"
"What do you think you are doing?" Catherine retorted. "Lah, I thought I raised you to have more sense than this!"
"More sense than- What are you talking about? You are being absurd."
"I am being absurd? What happened to never forgiving the man? He disappeared for ten, near eleven years, Cami."
"Yes, and I am never going to forget that. I could never forget that." Camille walked past her mother and into the house, dropping her shoes and checking her daughter snoozing in her crib.
"Camille, my love, I don't-" Cathrine trailed off. "Dear heart, when he died, it destroyed you. What happens when he goes back to England?"
Camille touched Aimèe's soft curls, grounding herself. "Then I will know that he is still out there somewhere."
Catherine shook her head. "I hope you know what you're doing."
Her eyes didn't move from her daughter.
"So do I."